Those who have homes, when home they do repair, To a last lodging call their wandering friends; Their short uneasy sleeps are broke with care, To look how near their own destruction tends.
Those, who have none, sit round where once it was, And with full eyes each wonted room require; Haunting the yet warm ashes of the place, As murdered men walk where they did expire.
Some stir up coals and watch the vestal fire, Others in vain from sight of ruin run; And while through burning lab'rinths they retire, With loathing eyes repeat what they would shun.
The most in fields, like herded beasts, lie down, To dews obnoxious on the grassy floor;[188] And while their babes in sleep their sorrows drown, Sad parents watch the remnants of their store.
While by the motion of the flames they guess What streets are burning now, and what are near, An infant, waking, to the paps would press, And meets, instead of milk, a falling tear.
No thought can ease them but their sovereign's care, Whose praise the afflicted as their comfort sing; E'en those, whom want might drive to just despair, Think life a blessing under such a king.
Meantime he sadly suffers in their grief, Outweeps an hermit, and outprays a saint; All the long night he studies their relief, How they may be supplied, and he may want.
"O God," said he, "thou patron of my days, Guide of my youth in exile and distress! Who me, unfriended, brought'st by wond'rous ways, The kingdom of my fathers to possess:
"Be thou my judge, with what unwearied care I since have laboured for my people's good; To bind the bruises of a civil war, And stop the issues of their wasting blood.
"Thou, who hast taught me to forgive the ill, And recompense, as friends, the good misled; If mercy be a precept of thy will, Return that mercy on thy servant's head.
"Or if my heedless youth has stepped astray, Too soon forgetful of thy gracious hand, On me alone thy just displeasure lay, But take thy judgments from this mourning land.
"We all have sinned; and thou hast laid us low, As humble earth, from whence at first we came: Like flying shades before the clouds we show, And shrink like parchment in consuming flame.
"O let it be enough what thou hast done; When spotted deaths ran arm'd through every street, With poisoned darts, which not the good could shun, The speedy could out-fly, or valiant meet.[189]